Paul and Lucy Spadoni periodically live in Tuscany to explore Paul’s Italian roots, practice their Italian and enjoy “la dolce vita.”
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Friday, April 22, 2011

Short side trip to Latvia

Sunday, April 17

Thinking that we will never find a better time to visit Lela's family in Georgia, we have bought tickets on airBaltic to fly from Rome to Tbilisi, with a six-hour layover in Riga, Latvia. We decide to spend our extra time in Riga seeing the historic center, so we walk into the airport parking lot to explore the transportation options. A line of shiny new vans will take us for 5 euros, but we walk farther and see an older van full of people. The driver honks his horn and motions us to get in, but we find he doesn't speak English and we don't know where he is going. A passenger offers to translate, but the driver is impatient and pulls out. The van behind us is empty, and we study the map painted on the side. It will take us where we want to go for only 1 euro each, but the driver is not leaving for twenty minutes.

At this point, a middle-aged Latvian woman named Luda takes us under her wins. Only sixty meters away is the city bus, and Luda will show us where to get off. The cost is the same, 1 euro each. Latvia is part of the European Union, but apparently it is in a transition phase between lats and euros, and the driver doesn't want our 2 euros; he will only accept lats. Luda comes to our rescue again, paying for our tickets in lats while I hand her my euros.

The half hour bus ride gives us a chance for some quality people-watching. Latvia is in Northern Europe (I confess I had to look on the map to find it when I saw where the airline route would take us), and the people are mixed fair-haired and dark-haired. The dress style is more casual than in Italy, so Lucy and I blend in perfectly. We do notice a complete lack of Africans and very few Eastern Asians, and we think that might have something to do with the colder climate and more isolated position. The trees are just barely starting to show hints of green, and there are no blossoms. Italy's temperate climate and central location make it a prime location for the immigrants which are currently crowding in daily by the thousands.

Old town Riga turns out to be a very welcoming place, with modern bands playing and singing mostly American soft rock in two of the central piazzas. We also find a mixture of foreign-themed restaurants--Asian and Italian especially--and besides the usual McDonalds, there is also a TGIF Friday's doing a steady business. The young people we meet or overhear seem to speak English quite well, and we think it would be very easy for Americans to live here without learning Latvian, probably easier than it is to live in a little village in Italy, though it's unfair to compare living in the largest city in Latvia to a small town in Italy.

Thanks to perfect instructions from Luda and an office where we exchange some euros for lats, we take the bus back to the airport and catch our midnight flight to Tbilisi without a hitch.

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About Me

First off, before you hassle me about our title, Lucy thought of it. Yes, I know some people may think broad is derogatory, but the etymology is uncertain and she doesn’t find it offensive, and it made me laugh. We have been married since 1974 and are empty-nesters now, which allows me to bring my submerged Italophilia into the open. We first came to live in Italy from February-April in 2011 and have returned during the same months every year. From 2011-2015, we lived in San Salvatore, at the foot of the hilltop city Montecarlo, where my paternal grandparents were born, raised and, in 1908, married. In late 2015, we bought a home in Montecarlo. We come for a variety of purposes: We want to re-establish contact with distant cousins in both Nonno’s and Nonna’s families, we want to learn the language and see what it is like to live as Italians in modern Italy, we like to travel and experience different cultures. Even if we aren’t successful at achieving these purposes, we love Italy and enjoy every moment here, so there is no chance we will be disappointed. I am grateful to God for giving me a wife who is beautiful, clever, adaptable and willing to jump into my dreams wholeheartedly.